UNESCO Observatory Cultural Village Program

Cultural Village Program

The UNESCO Observatory, in partnership with local communities, has established arts based inter-disciplinary projects across fourteen countries within and outside the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands and Kenya. The Observatory is creating partnerships across the University of Melbourne, with schools, NGOs, professional organisations and groups to develop new environments and programs. These multi-skilling approaches have the capacity to develop vocational training skills, to reduce gender gaps and increase access to employment and income.

The Cultural Village program aims to increase opportunities such as using eco-tourism as an economic driver for the retention of heritage and cultural practices, for community strengthening, health and wellbeing. Furthermore, the Cultural Village program addresses the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the growing desire of young people to contribute. The UNESCO Observatory has a vision to implement the arts in education in cultural villages and has now developed the key phases of the UNESCO Observatory cultural village model. This will serve as an example of how arts education and creative activities in general are a crucial part of enabling sustainability, social cohesion, resilience and a vernacular expression of cultural diversity.

Partners involved in the project are from diverse fields such as architecture and the arts, sociology and economics and business. Their joint contributions are evidence of how arts education will strengthen remote, isolated, climatically threatened or disadvantaged communities when orchestrated in multi-disciplinary teams.

Projects

Australia

India

Japan

Kenya

Laos

Lapland

New Zealand

Papua New Guinea

Timor Leste

United Arab Emirates

Vietnam

 

GLOBAL

 

Lindy Joubert
Director, UNESCO Observatory on Multi-Disciplinary Research in the Arts
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning
The University of Melbourne
T: +61 3 8344 7437
F: +61 3 8344 5532
E: lindyaj@unimelb.edu.au

top of page